1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-based search system and method, and, more particularly, to an image-based search system and method, which acquire the attribute information of images in advance, thereby enabling accurate and detailed information searching using various types of attribute information, such as one or more keywords, which are included in one or more images, when the images are selected and thereby enabling a user to directly construct desired search information in image form and to perform information searching using the attribute information acquired from the constructed image, and which, in particular, encode the attribute information of images in specific space within image information, thereby considering the efficiency with which searching is performed and thereby providing link information, pattern information or color information along with an image, in order to solve the problems of conventional information search methods of obtaining simple search results through the entry of simple text.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typical searching in a typical search site is performed in such a way that a user enters desired search text in a search term box and then relevant result information is returned. Here, the result information generally includes not only search results in text form but also search results in image form, which are previously registered by other image registrants.
For example, search results, obtained by entering the word ‘computer’ in a search term box in the search site Google®, are shown in FIG. 1A.
In FIG. 1A, when an image section is clicked on, various images are found, as shown in FIG. 1B. The found images are images that include the word ‘computer’ in their image file names.
When one of the images shown in FIG. 1B is clicked on, an original Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) file including the relevant image is found. That is, when an image indicated by a red circle in FIG. 1B is clicked on, a search result, such as that shown in FIG. 1C, is displayed. As shown in FIG. 1C, the name of a found image file is ‘give computer.png’, and an image on the right bottom of FIG. 1C is gathered and stored by a search engine and then displayed on the search screen of FIG. 1B at the request for searching by a user.
Another search site, that is, Naver®, provides image search results that exist in HTML files in which an entered search term is included in text form. When a found image is clicked on, the page of a photo album, an Internet café, a blog or the like, in which the clicked image is included, is provided.
However, although the above-described search sites provide relevant images in response to the input of each search term, users generally perform each searching using only one or two search terms, and search results provide only web pages including relevant images, and thus it is difficult to find desired information.
Furthermore, when it is difficult to describe a search object using a word, an appropriate word does not come into one's mind, or the entire attribute information related to a search object is not recalled and entered, desired search results cannot be obtained.
Furthermore, when images relevant to entered text are primarily found and one of the found images or a combination of two or more found images is selected, it is impossible to obtain search results based on unique attribute information related to each image, and it is also impossible to perform searching using an image instead of text.
For example, it may be assumed that a user attempts to search for the following TV:
Product name: TV
Use: household
Location: wall mount type
Screen characteristic: LCD
Color: black
Brand: Samsung
Appearance: rounded edges
Size: 30 inches
. . .
In order to obtain accurate search results for the TV having the above-described features through the conventional search sites, a search term, such as ‘household 30-inch black wall mount-type LCD TV having rounded edges by Samsung® . . . ‘must be entered in text form. Otherwise, time and/or effort is inevitably consumed through repetitive text searching within results.
The reason why it is impossible to perform detailed information searching using images in the conventional search engines is that the conventional search engines store only image files, file names, the URLs of web pages (that is, sources), and/or text, existing in relevant web pages, in their image data management databases. Accordingly, it is impossible to perform additional searching using text information stored in image data management databases.
In particular, no attempt has been made to perform information searching through image simulation, which uses attribute values, which are obtained from silhouette information, pattern information and color information, produced during a process in which a user directly creates an image to search for desired information or during a process in which a user assembles provided detailed images and changes the pattern or color of the image, as search terms.